KATHMANDU, JUNE 25
CPN-Maoist Centre leader Ram Kumar Sharma, who had also represented in the Constituent Assembly, said the country should not have waited for eight years to grant citizenship cards to children of citizens by birth and single mothers whose rights have been guaranteed by the constitution.
Speaking with mediapersons at an interaction organised by Forum for Women, Law and Development here today, Sharma, who had staged hunger strike demanding implementation of the bill promulgated by President Ramchandra Paudel, said many eligible citizens endured unimaginable suffering due to state apathy.
He said his own relatives - brothers-in-law and their children who were born in Nepal had not been able to obtain citizenship in the absence of a new citizenship law. He accused former president Bidyha Devi Bhandari of violating the constitution by pocket-vetoing the citizenship bill. "What if all these eligible citizens who were unable to apply for formal sector jobs or seek foreign employment in the last eight years filed case demanding compensation for their lost opportunities?" he wondered.
Executive Director of FWLD Sabin Shrestha said the Supreme Court's decision to vacate the earlier interim order that had blocked the implementation of the citizenship act eased the suffering of lakhs of eligible citizens who had to wait for eight years to get citizenship.
He said the new citizenship law removed some of the bottlenecks, but it was not a perfect document yet.
The new laws enable children of citizens by birth and children of single mothers to obtain Nepali citizenship and for the first time the bill enables foreign women married to Nepali men to apply for Nepali citizenship after marriage, Shrestha said, adding that Non-resident Nepalis would also get their citizenship that would grant them economic, social and cultural rights, but not political rights.
Shrestha said that the bill, however, contained an unwise provision of affidavit whereby a mother, whose husband is not traced, will have to sign an affidavit to transmit Nepali nationality to her children and if details of the affidavit are found to be false, she will face punishment up to three years in jail and in such a case, the citizenship of her children will be revoked.
This provision may render the children of such women stateless, Shrestha argued. He said the citizenship of a single mother whose father is not traced gets converted to naturalised citizenship if it is found that the father of the child is a foreign citizen, the same provision should apply to the mother who submits affidavit saying her husband is untraced.
He said the new citizenship law relaxed some of the restrictions faced by members of gender and sexual minority but it had still not done full justice to them. In the case of gender and sexual minority, the new law does not recognise that people have the right to change their gender to other than the gender assigned to them by their parents at the time of birth.
"At present any member of gender and sexual minority who wants to obtain citizenship with recognition of their gender identity id required to be checked by a medical board and this invasive procedure violates the right to privacy," Shrestha said.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 26, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
